ON FLEEK: The Shadow Knows

Benjamin Moore hit the mark with its just-announced 2017 color of the year, Shadow, a moody purple hue and a dramatic choice for dramatic times. (And that’s as much as I’ll say about politics on this blog.) After Simply White as its 2016 choice under-whelmed me big-time, Shadow is a welcome about-face.

Benjamin Moore

“Shadow is a little bit rock and roll,” Ellen O’Neill, the paint manufacturer’s creative director, told Architectural Digest. “It’s the color of the galaxy but also the color of a beautiful fig. It’s passion, it’s bravery, but it’s also silence…It’s the purple you find in a Renaissance or Dutch Master painting that’s a stabilizer to the other colors around it.”

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little stability after this year’s election season. (Oops! OK OK OK OK, no more, I promise!)

Benjamin Moore

O’Neill explains the journey from Simply White to Shadow thusly: “We didn’t have an epiphany like we’d had about white, but we all felt a little color-deprived. Because everybody was still ruminating about it, I took about 500 pictures—everything from our travels to Paris, Korea, and Copenhagen to what people were wearing at the Met Gala—and assembled them on the wall in a room. Then at one o’clock, everybody came in. It was sort of like a parlor game. I said, “OK, look at this wall,” which was divided into color families. I said, “Just go to the place that talks to you.’ And everybody went over to that sort of aubergine family. Someone from the team said, “That picture resonates with me because I see shadows in that flower petal.” Another team member said, “That’s funny—we have a color named Shadow,” and I went, “That’s it!’”

Video further elucidates selection process

Benjamin Moore also released suggested palette

Benjamin Moore

Here are the same colors, sans names and numbers, in a somewhat more illustrative rendering…

How will this compare with Pantone’s yet-to-be-announced 2017 color of the year?

Generally, Pantone selects its top color from the spring palette put together after the spring/summer fashion weeks the prior fall. This fall, this was the spring palette they released:

Pantone

No purples here. It’s an unfortunate oversight, but I’m sure the two agencies—Benjamin Moore and Pantone—have a vested interest in making sure their choices ARE different. I’m guessing the Pantone 2017 color will be in the green range. Why? Because greens are the new neutrals, and the current climate is anything but black-and-white or beige. (Greens also pair well with Shadow!)

Pantone generally announces its new color of the year in the first week of December, so we’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with.